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Easy Homemade Clothes Pin Holder

Did you know the average household can save $25 a month by line drying their clothing?

Furthermore, laundry that is washed with cold water and then line dried lasts longer--after all, what do you think all that lint in your dryer's lint trap is from? Lint is made up of little particles of your clothing that have come off due to the high heat and tumbling action of the dryer. This means that clothing dried in a dryer will show signs of wear and tear sooner, and colors will fade more quickly.

These are great reasons to line dry your laundry whenever possible, but I wont stop there. Line dried clothes smell like fresh air and sunshine (much more pleasing than synthetic fragrances), are not full of static electricity, and--if dried in the sun--are disinfected by the sun's ultraviolet rays. Line drying gets you outside in the fresh air, and it burns around 45 calories every 15 minutes you are hanging clothes.

As you can see, there are many benefits to line drying your laundry. Once you have your clothesline set up and some clothespins handy, you are ready to go. But what will you keep all those wily clothespins in? Keeping in the spirit of conservation and saving money, why, you'll recycle a vinegar jug of course:

My husband made a couple of these to hold our clothespins. You can use most any plastic jug (such as a milk jug), but the thicker plastics, as used in these vinegar jugs, will last longer when exposed to the sun.

You will simply cut the top of the jug off, leaving the handle. Slice into the handle so that it can be hung, and poke a couple holes in the bottom of the jug to allow for drainage when it rains.

Comments

Just found your Blog and love what you are doing. After my own heart. Have always hung out clothes - starting with baby diapers. Real ones. That will tell you my age- before (well during) disposable ones! I love making my own things and not buying them. We live in an old farmhouse and too have chickens and a huge garden. Love fresh eggs. I recently started using salt in my rinse water when washing clothes and this relieves the need for fabric softner, even when the clothes are hung outside. Keep up the good ideas!!

Thank you so much for your kind words :) We are planning on having a couple more little ones, and I'd like to use cloth diapers myself, so I will be hanging some of those on the clothesline myself. I will have to try your salt idea as well! Salt is pretty cheap!

To avoid clogging and bad odors, sink and tub drains should be periodically cleaned.

A once a month cleaning with a non-toxic, homemade cleaner prevents needing a stronger, usually sodium hydroxide (lye) based, cleaner to remove clogs. Sodium hydroxide is extremely caustic, and will damage the lungs if inhaled, burn skin and eyes, and can be fatal if swallowed. In addition, the heat generated by using sodium hydroxide can soften PVC pipes, and damage old, corroded pipes. It also changes the pH of water and can cause fish kills.

A much nicer alternative to this harsh chemical is the simple combination of baking soda and vinegar, followed with boiling water. When baking soda and vinegar are combined, they foam and expand, cleaning the sides of your pipes and dissolving fatty acids. The boiling water then washes it all away. This method is a great way to use up the box of baking soda in your frig that is not longer doing a good job of deodorizing.

Every little thing you do helps and the small things really do add up. Which is why I have a somewhat creepy tub of soap scraps in my bathroom.

I admit, it seems a little weird to save soap scraps, but it wasn't always this way. In fact, they used to have little contraptions for saving your soap scraps.

But those days are gone. Or are they?

I think frugality is making a comeback--at least, it is around here, because I save all our soap scraps. What do I do with them?

Recycled Soap Scrap Bars

If you are regular users of bar soap, a family of four can easily manage to get six additional bars of soap per year by saving soap scraps. It doesn't seem like much, so I'll write it this way instead: in ten years, that would be 60 bars of "free" soap. There, that seems more impressive.

Ingredients:
Soap scraps
Water
Herbs (optional)

1. Grate or finely chop soap scraps. Measure the amount you end up wi…